


tender as a bruise

by oblivioluna



Category: Purple Hyacinth (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst That Is Thinly Veiled Fluff, Enemies to Allies To Friends to One-Sided Pining Enemies, F/M, I'm A Trash Can Full Of Ideas, I'm back again, Idiots, Pining Lauren and Kieran, TW: A LOT OF IDIOCY, accidentally a kieran white character study?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:08:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24475528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oblivioluna/pseuds/oblivioluna
Summary: “Why,” he asks, wincing as she tightens the bandages around his back, “do you keep coming back?”Lauren looks up at him, a wordless answer in the depth of her gaze. The way she looks at him now is not quite wolfish, but the anger in them is now more flatlined, neutral, sharpened into something formed more out of curiosity than anything. In her eyes, there are a million questions without answers.“The same reason you keep staying."(prompt: it is impossible to lie to your destined soulmate.)
Relationships: Lauren Sinclair/Kieran White
Comments: 5
Kudos: 113
Collections: Purple Hyacinth Soulmate AU





	tender as a bruise

**Author's Note:**

> _Often when I imagine you  
>  your wholeness cascades into many shapes.  
> You run like a herd of luminous deer  
> and I am dark, I am forest._  
>  **  
>  _-The Book of Hours I, 45_  
> **  
>    
> 
> 
> _“Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!”_  
>  **  
>  _-Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights_  
> **

It starts on a bridge, shrouded by the light of the full moon, and a sword between the two of them.

But first, there is a loaded gun, and quite an amount of resistance. The barrel of the officer’s gun meets his forehead, and he watches her click the trigger experimentally, a clear threat to be found in her burning gaze.

“You’re the Purple Hyacinth, aren’t you?” she demands, the moon casting shadows over her face like a mockery of chiaroscuro. “The most dreaded criminal in the city. You forgot to mention that during our chat last night.”

He only smiles in the face of her grazing the metal weapon against his skin. “I figured it would be obvious after you saw the crime scene.”

Really, he should’ve known better than to send her on a wild goose chase, but sending this woman into a fury is strangely amusing. Their first meeting had gone awfully terrible, but there was something joyously intriguing in sending her into a spiral. Despite the amount of conduct and duty she wraps around herself, this woman’s heart is beating to the rhythm of a song called vengeance. He can hear it loud and clear.

It is his own melody, after all.

“And yet you still thought I’d be crazy enough to make a deal with the Purple Hyacinth?!”

“Well, not crazy, just extremely desperate, which you a-”

_“I am not desperate.”_

What a little liar.

And there she goes again, acting as if they aren’t two sides of the same coin.

“Why didn’t you kill me?”

“My, my, did you hit your head that hard?” he teases, cocking his head to the side. “I already told you. I need a pet, someone in the police department to put my plans in motion.”

She drags their little game on for ages. When it doesn’t need to be anything but a short and sweet _I yield, help me get what I want._ But of course, she loves control, and so he has to resort to answering mountains upon mountains of questions.

_I yield,_ she would’ve said, were she smart enough. _You’re just as vicious as I. Help me burn it all down._

“Seriously, why?” she demands, watching him as he swings from a pole. “Why follow him at all if you want to stop him so bad?”

He freezes.

What a hypocrite he is.

_Why didn’t I kill you,_ he thinks, the thought drifting to a close alongside another, graver, bigger thought: 

A realization:

_I’m tired of the Scythe's methods,_ one lie croons. _Working for the Leader’s agenda bores me,_ another says. An elaborate one tells him to say that _I’m sick of inciting senseless violence against the city when it could be much more contained. I don’t enjoy it anymore,_ rasps the vilest one, sickening and poisonous.

He can say none of these things. Do none of these things. He can only hope his enemy and perhaps soon-to-be partner does not notice the tell-tale flicker of his eyes, the lead that fills his mouth, the heaviness of his heart.

He opens his mouth again. Words fall flat.

No lies come out.

“And this question shall go unanswered, I’m afraid,” is all he says, hopping down from the pole. She doesn’t say a word, her eyes roaming over his body in a cold, methodical way. “My motives aren’t relevant and I don’t care about yours. Suffice to say, I have as many reasons as you do to want him gone.” 

The truth feels like a thousand knives at this point.

He looks at her. It feels like being burned alive.

“Do you accept this deal or not?”

“Suppose I do.” There is still something he can’t pinpoint in her gaze. “What are the conditions?”

Later on, when she gives him a piece of herself, her name, he understands.

_Lauren Sinclair,_ he mulls over to himself as she walks away into the night. Kieran’s hand shimmers in the night with blood, wallowing from a shallow cut on his palm. It is mixing with the water beneath. _The moon herself. Cold and unyielding light, unable to be corrupted._

_The light draws out the dark._

“I suppose my judgement is finally due,” he chuckles to himself, mirthless laughter echoing in the distance.

____

“What the hell was that?”

Her eyes are lifeless. It scares him to death, but he doesn’t let that on. The gold in them is gone, replaced by an amber void. She will not answer him. No matter how much he pushes her to answer.

_Human life is fragile,_ she’d said once, wrapping bandages around her knuckles before she’d struck. _Easy to end in a second._

_Not you,_ he wanted to say, but did not. _You’ll never break._

And now here he is, so close to breaking on his own.

She put them in danger. She almost killed both of them. He should hate Lauren Sinclair more than anything, and the worst part of him does at the moment, and so does the rational part of him. All of her clarity was gone in a minute, and anger had clouded her judgement like a shroud. All that was left in her trail of wrath was a fatal mistake and now, this darkened alleyway, with their worst selves clashing against each other.

“Get off.”

“You don’t get to act like this when you nearly killed both of us, officer,” he snarls. “Answer _me._ ”

“Why do you care?” she hisses, shoving him off of her. Kieran grapples with the force of her weight as they end up at each other’s throat. 

He opens his mouth.

And for what seems like an eternity, is left speechless.

“What’s wrong?” she asks numbly. “Finally decided to break our contact?”

“I’m not killing you yet,” he says slowly. 

“That’s not a lie, but it really feels like one,” Lauren says, shaking her head as she yanks her wrists out of his grip.

“You can tell whenever I lie, officer. It would be pointless to pretend with you.”

“And yet you’ve never.”

“Wanting to catch me in the act?”

She bangs her back against the wall, shielding her face. Her wordlessness draws out his fury more than anything. Kieran lets go of her, sheathing his sword in its coverings to the hilt.

“The next time you put us in danger, warn me first,” he spits. 

Lauren continues to be silent.

He walks away, footsteps barely making a sound as he disappears into the next alley.

He does not see her cover her tears.

He does not see her grasp onto the lone photo in her hand, a painful reminder of what is real and what is not.

____

When he finally does lie, it feels as if he has broken the surface of the sea he has drowned in for so long. It also feels like being choked by miles and miles of seawater for ages, with nothing around but the cold blue depths of the ocean for company. 

_“Lune is a threat to our lives,”_ rasps the fifth Apostle, back to him in the church booth. Kieran looks wordlessly down at the numerous files on Gregory McTrevor. _“You must work deftly as possible on your next three assignments.”_

“The last third is a doozy,” he says in a mockery of exhaustion, wiping at his brow. “Are you certain this won’t be a new record?”

The Apostle sighs.

_“If you’re going to whine about the third, Hyacinth, then don’t come crying to me when you have the fourth.”_

**“How exciting,”** Kieran trills, then slams the folder shut when he realizes what he has said.

For so long, he has been powerless.

The lies feel like a comfort.

____

Or perhaps they’re just a numbing agent.

____

He knows it’s seconds away from all going down the drain when he sees her next.

He pounces, a predator under the snowy daylight, by way of yanking her into the nearest brick alleyway, hand over her mouth and the other clamped around her wrist. She smells like gunpowder and sandalwood, but the curve of her neck is remarkably soft as she writhes in his grasp, then settles down by only increments when she realizes who he is.

Kieran ignores the way his heart beats a rhythm when she relaxes - only for a minute.

He cannot see her eyes behind her mask.

“Hi there, darling.” He doesn’t try to lie. He cannot. “It’s been a while. I hope you’ve missed me.”

____

Sometimes Kieran wonders why Lauren hasn’t caught onto it yet.

_You will be truthful with them,_ his mother had told him once, brushing his hair while the rice paper lanterns had glowed all around them, and the fountains outside their garden had run all through the dawn. _You will know, then, that you will never have to lie to them because there is no need to lie to the one who has your heart._

_You have my heart,_ he will never say. It is too dangerous to utter even a second of this truth.

He tugs at the wrappings around his bruised back. Kieran doesn’t say a word as he hears her turn around, watching him fiddle with the bandages. The cuts sting, but he’s faced worse. It’s a miracle they were even able to get out tonight.

She’d almost died. She’d almost died.

He should hate her.

He should’ve let her burn, and yet he didn’t.

“You look stupid,” she says, and he startles as she adjusts the bandages. “Let me help you.”

“I-”

“No objections,” she says sternly.

When she is done, that is when he decides to pounce.

“Why,” he asks, wincing as she tightens the bandages around his back, “do you keep coming back?”

"After numerous threats on my life?"

"What else, officer?"

Lauren looks up at him, a wordless answer in the depth of her gaze. The way she looks at him now is not quite wolfish, but the anger in them is now more flatlined, neutral, sharpened into something formed more out of curiosity than anything. In her eyes, there are a million questions. 

“The same reason you keep staying.”

____

Hypotheticals are a blessing.

"I could've been the one to kill Harvey, you know that?" he asks, looking away from her. He can't look at her, period. The snowfall covers their footsteps, even as they tread the same path they did before on the bridge, except that now neither of them are alone. When he does look, she is full of rage.

It hurts to see her this way.

"I would've killed you," she rasps, auburn hair a dark brown and crimson simultaneously in the light.

All he does is chuckle and look away again.

And then reverts back to meeting her gaze, because Lauren is his annihilation and also his magnet.

"I could find the person who did it for you."

She smiles, and it is his world that falls apart at the joy in her visage, the softening of her brow. In a single moment, she's become not just his accomplice in vengeance, nor a dutiful partner, but something more. Something that could be around for more than mere seconds, more than is required for their partnership.

She could stay.

____

She doesn’t stay.

“What did you think you’d find underneath?” he taunts, feeling the heat in his chest crack, and break, until there is nothing but the hot anguish of rage consuming him whole. “A pitiful, hurt puppy? A lost, misunderstood sweetheart?”

He can’t lie.

But he can maneuver around the truth, chasing circles around it.

Maybe this is where they’re met to end up: driven apart, because it doesn’t matter if he is bound to her, heart and soul. It doesn’t matter if they’ll go down in flames, ruin to fire to ash. 

Even if Lauren Sinclair is his soulmate, she cannot stay.

She cannot love him.

“Oh, please, Lauren,” he whispers, her voice soft as a bell, his fingers even softer as he tucks a strand of hair behind her ear like a tender lover would in the rain, after seeing their beloved come home soaked with eyes of bitter champagne. “I am the Purple Hyacinth.”

It is the last soft thing he does for a while.

____

Square one.

When he sees her next, he knows they’ve lost it all, and it is his fault and his fault alone. Shock shields her, anger exposes her, and wrath becomes her armor. Kieran stands his ground, and does not back down, but he feels it as if it’s real and alive: the clash of metal against metal, her blade at his throat.

_I’ve missed you,_ he will never say. _I’m sorry._

“Lauren Sinclair,” she drawls. “Welcome to the 11th precinct, Kieran White.”

**Author's Note:**

> *me, slamming my five-day writer's block with a hammer*: WILL THIS GET YOU OUT OF YOUR STUPOR, MORON?! HERE'S 2K+ OF PINING TRAGIC IDIOTS NO ONE WANTED.
> 
> ____
> 
> purple hyacinth webtoon: [here](https://www.webtoons.com/en/mystery/purple-hyacinth/list?title_no=1621&page=1)


End file.
